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Deception
Summary A family portrait painted by a kindergartner leads the detectives to investigate her mother for child sexual abuse of her teenage stepson. When the boy's father is found murdered, the focus of the investigation shifts to the boy -- and his stepmother goes to great lengths to protect him and prevent the detectives from learning the truth. Plot Benson and Stabler are at an elementary school, interviewing a six-year-old girl named Chloe, who has drawn a picture of her family that shows her crying. Benson asks her why she is crying and she says it is because her mother loves her seventeen year old half-brother Kyle more than her, and that she once caught them in bed together without any clothes on. The teacher warns Stabler that Chloe’s father, Lawrence Fuller, is a wealthy business man and has a temper, and that Chloe’s mother, Gloria Stanfield, is a minor actress, and that they are both a handful. At the hospital, the doctors say that Chloe’s injuries which had first gotten the teacher worried are just the usual scrapes and bruises a child gets, and when her father comes to pick her up he says that old fractures the doctors found are from when she fell when she was three. Benson and Stabler ask him whether he has noticed anything strange about his wife’s relationship with his son, and he says no, but storms off and takes Chloe home. Munch and Tutuola go to speak to Kyle at his school, and he denies any inappropriate relationship with his stepmother, but the detectives aren’t convinced. The Fuller’s housekeeper reluctantly admits that she once caught Gloria kissing Kyle inappropriately. When Benson and Stabler are summoned to Gloria’s lawyer’s office to meet her, she denies any relationship with Kyle. Later, the detectives are called to a disturbance at Chloe’s school and find Gloria and Lawrence arguing. Lawrence accuses Gloria of molesting his children, Gloria accuses him of being violent with them. Benson takes Chloe away and Stabler informs her parents that the kids will be placed in the custody of the state until the matter is resolved. When Munch and Tutuola go to Kyle’s school to pick him up, they find he is already gone. They talk to some of his friends who reveal that Gloria likes to flirt with them and that they wouldn’t necessarily be surprised to find out that Kyle was sleeping with her. The detectives get a call that evening and find out that Lawrence Fuller has been murdered in his apartment, bashed with a baseball bat found underneath Kyle’s bed. Gloria and Kyle are both missing, but Kyle soon shows up at the building and claims that he just went for a walk and knows nothing about the murder or where Gloria is. Gloria shows up at the station with a lawyer for Kyle, and talks to Benson and Stabler. She says that Lawrence and Kyle were fighting and she couldn’t take it, so she left and went to a hotel, but she stops short of implicating Kyle. She says that she has no motive for murder herself, because before she got married, Lawrence, who assumed she was probably a gold-digger, got her to sign a prenuptial agreement which means she gets nothing, and all the money goes into trusts for Kyle and Chloe. When Kyle’s prints are the only one’s found on the murder weapon, he is arrested and charged, but he is released on bail. The detectives get a warrant for Gloria’s hotel room, hoping to find the clothes Kyle was wearing when he killed his father. The clerk at the hotel tells them that Gloria left for the airport with a young man that sounds like Kyle, and by the time the detectives find out that they took a flight to Washington D.C., they have already returned. They go to the hotel room and find Kyle and Gloria in bed together having sex. Kyle reveals that they are now married. When interviewed, Gloria insists that nothing happened between them until Kyle was 17, so she has done nothing illegal. The result of their marriage is that neither can now testify against each other because of spousal privilege. Kyle’s bail is revoked because he fled the jurisdiction, if only briefly. Cabot finds that the marriage is valid under Virginia state law, where a minor can marry with the permission of a guardian, even if that guardian is the person they are going to marry. Outside the court there are many reporters who have caught onto the story and want a comment, and one asks a question about Gloria’s pregnancy. Stabler and Benson drag him aside to ask about the pregnancy (which they didn’t know about) and the reporter reveals that Gloria is three months pregnant and took Kyle with her to the doctor’s appointment. Benson and Stabler tell Gloria that they need a paternity test, and she says that she will have her lawyer arrange it. The test shows that neither Kyle nor Lawrence are the father. Benson receives a call and is told that Gloria is in the hospital and is claiming that she was raped. She says that it was Frank Barbarossa, her former lover, whom she says admitted to killing Lawrence out of spite and who threatened to do the same to her. Frank is arrested and they find out that he is a personal trainer and had a one hour session with a client in the Fuller’s apartment building, however there is an extra half and hour which he spent in the building after the session was over. He denies that he had anything to do with Lawrence’s death. The detectives look into his phone records and find that someone named Frank Barbarosa at the time of the murder from the deli across the street. The deli owner confirms that Gloria was in the deli that night and made two calls from the payphone. Meanwhile, the lab technician tells Benson and Stabler that the sperm in Gloria’s rape kit is Frank's, but must have been frozen, because the tails are broken. They realize that Gloria faked the rape. Frank wants to implicate Gloria, for a deal, and he admits that he killed Lawrence Fuller. He says that Gloria gave him the security code for the apartment and told him to use the baseball bat to set up Kyle, but he is unable to offer any corroborated proof that would really implicate Gloria. The detectives figure out that the second call which Gloria made from the deli must have been to Kyle, telling him to get out of the apartment. They realize that Kyle is willing to take the fall in order to protect Gloria, and that if he goes free from jail, his life may be in danger because, as his wife, Gloria has access to the trust fund, which now includes the vast fortune Kyle inherited from Lawrence after his murder, and might kill him, as well. Cabot then decides to drop her case against Kyle, so long as he testifies against Gloria, and will then use Frank's testimony to further implicate her in the murder. Benson and Stabler visit Kyle in jail and try to convince him that Gloria is setting him up. He is finally convinced when he finds out that the baby is Frank's, not his. Kyle says that Gloria called him the night of the murder, and told him she’d take care of everything. Benson and Stabler catch up with Gloria outside a family planning clinic, as she is intending to abort her pregnancy. Kyle steps out of their car to confront Gloria and to tell her that he does not believe her lies anymore and will testify that she illegally had sex with him when he was a minor and that she hired Frank to kill his father. He hands her divorce papers, thus removing spousal privilege and revoking Gloria's access to Kyle's trust fund, while bitterly calling her "Mom". The detectives arrest her for first-degree murder. Cast Main cast * Christopher Meloni as Detective Elliot Stabler * Mariska Hargitay as Detective Olivia Benson * Richard Belzer as Detective John Munch * Stephanie March as A.D.A. Alexandra Cabot * Ice-T as Detective Odafin Tutuola * B.D. Wong as Dr. George Huang (credit only) * Dann Florek as Captain Donald Cragen Recurring cast * Daniel Sunjata as C.S.U. Technician Burt Trevor * Peter Hermann as Defense Attorney Trevor Langan * Jill Marie Lawrence as Defense Attorney Cleo Conrad * Harvey Atkin as Judge Alan Ridenour Guest cast * Sherilyn Fenn as Gloria Stanfield * Frank Grillo as Frank Barbarossa * Jonathan Bennett as Kyle Fuller * Gerry Bamman as Defense Attorney Schaeffer * Darcy Pulliam as Housekeeper * Jennifer Michelle Brown as Chloe Fuller * Tom Mason as Lawrence Fuller * Amy Bouril as Emily Savage * David Eye as Desk Clerk #1 * Alan Mozes as Reporter #3 * Ray Iannicelli as Store Clerk * Tommy Savas as Sanjeev * Brett Tabisel as Brian * Melissa Murray as Assistant M.E. Vivanne Hendrix * Barbara Pitts as E.R. Pediatrician * John Douglas Thompson as E.R. Doctor * Jon Dolton as Desk Clerk #2 * Bill Kocis as Reporter #2 * Katie McGee as Reporter #1 * William H. Burns as Uniform Officer * Joyce Curtis as Court Clerk References *ACS * *IRS *Virginia *Washington, D.C. Quotes ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Background information and notes Episode scene cards Category:SVU episodes